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Sipping Tea with The Reagans in Tehran

June 07, 2004
National Post
Amir Taheri

'The man you are going to meet will be the next president of the United States." This is how my friend Ardeshir Zahedi, Iran's ambassador to Washington at the time, described the "distinguished visitor" he wanted me to meet in Tehran.

The year was 1977 and the visitor was Ronald Reagan -- who, with his wife, Nancy, was spending a few days in Iran as a guest of Zahedi. The hitch, however, was that Zahedi himself was in Washington. It was thus the duty of his friends to look after the Reagans.

Zahedi's friendship with Reagan had irritated many in the Iranian government. Foreign Minister Abbas-Ali Khalatbari, for example, told me "our ambassador over there" was causing unnecessary "complications" in our relations with the Carter administration by "cuddling that radical extremist Ronald Reagan" -- who in 1977 was laying the foundation for his second and successful bid for the Republican leadership in 1980.

When Reagan eventually came to Tehran on a private visit, some of Khalatbari's hesitations had found echoes among other senior Iranian leaders. The Prime Minister, Amir-Abbas Hoveyda, politely declined to receive Reagan. But when a banquet was given in Reagan's honour at Hessarak, Zahedi's residence in the mountains north of Tehran, a good part of the Tehran glitterati showed up. There, in a brief speech, Reagan described Iran as "one of the frontiers of freedom today," adding, to the surprise of those present, that those frontiers would be extended in the future.

For Iranians obsessed with the threat from their Soviet neighbours, this was provocative talk. The best most Iranians could think of was to contain the Soviet monster in its lair. To even dream of forcing it into any retreat was pure fantasy.

What made Reagan's words effective was that he spoke in a tone of sincerity seldom associated with politicians. Reagan may have been acting -- after all, he had been an actor, though not a first-rate one, for years. But there was something in the way he exposed his vision of the world that the first word that came to mind was "conviction."

I had gone to the banquet -- at the time I was Editor-in-chief of Kayhan, the most important newspaper of Iran -- as a gesture toward Zahedi. But I was captivated by Reagan's vision. He appeared to be swimming entirely against the tide. I knew little of the United States but had been disturbed by much of what I had seen and heard during a number of brief visits there. I had visited with Washington's political elite, including House Speaker Tip O'Neil and half a dozen senators, such as Edward Kennedy and Frank Church, and had made the usual tour of newspaper editorial boards. I had concluded the Americans were tired and bored. All they wanted was to be left alone.

At one editorial lunch in Washington I had uttered a few good words about Richard Nixon. Those around the table had suddenly fallen silent, looking at me as if I were an alien.

So, meeting Ronald Reagan in Tehran was like running into a prehistoric man, a long-defunct species that existed only in imagination.

And this was precisely why Reagan was interesting.

I had gone to the banquet with some reluctance. But my curiosity had been aroused. This is why I asked to accompany the Reagans on a trip to Isfahan the following day. I saw the exercise as part of my education in American politics. The man in charge of the trip was Shapour Dolatshahi, scion of an old aristocratic family and a punctilious protocol officer. But his five-star program had been designed in such a way as to minimize Ronald and Nancy Reagan's contacts with the ordinary folk in the historic city.

Reagan would have none of that. "Ronny" insisted on pressing some flesh in the bazaar, at the mosques and at a local steel mill. Despite the obvious barrier of the language, he showed that he was a genuine man of the people, capable of communicating with individuals from all backgrounds.

Over lunch and at tea time, he asked numerous questions about Iran. I in turn asked him questions about the United States. In an interview a few weeks earlier, the Shah had told me he believed the United States had "entered an historic period of decline." Without revealing its source, I asked Reagan what he thought of that analysis.

"These are big words for me," he quipped. "But I can tell you that those who write us off make a big mistake."

At a tea shop in the bazaar, Reagan stopped to watch two men playing backgammon, a game every Iranian knows and plays.

"Sounds like international politics," Reagan joked. "Maybe I should practise it."

The hint was enough for Dolatshahi to present Reagan with a luxury backgammon set the following day, plus a 20-minute course in how to play.

I don't know whether or not Reagan learned the game. But his subsequent career showed that he used many of its rules in confronting and ultimately helping destroy the "Evil Empire."

Back in Tehran, and a few days later, Foreign Minister Khalatbari asked what I had thought of the strange American visitor.

"He is great," I said. "The exact opposite of Jimmy Carter, he is the other America, the America of Gary Cooper."

"But does he have any chance?" the minister had asked.

"None at all," I had said.

Amir Taheri is an Iranian author of 10 books on the Middle East and Islam.; www.benadorassociates.com.; Obituary of Ronald Reagan.

http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/4984